More than technical skills: learning to think like an engineer

When people imagine a tech programme, they often picture students learning programming languages, memorising syntax and completing assignments. But speak to the students at kood/Nairobi and a different story emerges.

They rarely begin by talking about Java or JavaScript. Instead, they talk about confidence. They talk about learning to tackle problems that seem impossible at first, collaborating with people whose thinking is completely different from their own, and discovering that becoming a software engineer is as much about mindset as it is about technology.

Joseph describes perhaps the biggest shift. Before joining the programme, complex problems often felt like roadblocks. Today, he approaches them differently. Every challenge has become “a puzzle waiting to be solved”. That change in perspective is difficult to teach through lectures, but it develops naturally when students spend months building real software, reviewing one another’s work and solving increasingly demanding projects.

For Cynthia, the journey is still accompanied by nerves. Every new project begins with the same feeling of uncertainty. “Before a project starts, I always feel overwhelmed and scared,” she says. Yet every completed project reinforces something more valuable than technical knowledge: the confidence that the next difficult challenge can also be overcome.

That confidence grows because students are expected to explain their decisions, not simply produce working code.

Ruth admits she expected to improve her technical abilities. What surprised her was everything else. Working alongside peers from different backgrounds has taught her to communicate clearly, justify design decisions and give constructive feedback. Reviewing other people’s work, she says, has strengthened her own understanding just as much as completing her own projects.

The peer-to-peer model often becomes the defining part of the experience. Jerry recalls how discussions with fellow students exposed him to entirely new approaches to algorithms and software design. “It is really exciting trying to get ideas from different people,” he reflects. Every review becomes an opportunity to discover that there is rarely only one correct solution.

Even students who arrive with previous technical experience find themselves challenged in unexpected ways.

Timothy had already worked with web technologies before joining the programme, but building complete applications—from frontend to backend and deployment—broadened both his technical understanding and his ambitions. Rather than learning isolated tools, he began thinking about complete systems and how different technologies fit together.

For Rozie, the progress has been equally tangible. Starting with very little practical experience, she now approaches debugging, application development and software projects with growing confidence. Her conclusion is simple: “The best way of learning is just learning by doing.”

That practical approach appears repeatedly throughout students’ stories. They are not simply learning technologies that may change in a few years’ time. They are developing habits that will remain valuable throughout their careers: analysing problems, collaborating effectively, accepting feedback, communicating clearly and continuing to learn as technology evolves.

As Denzel puts it, the experience has been “eye-opening”. Not because it offered easy answers, but because it taught him new ways to think.

Ultimately, that may be the greatest transformation students describe. They leave with stronger technical skills, certainly, but perhaps more importantly, they leave thinking like engineers.

kood/Nairobi is funded by the Estonian Centre for International Development (EstDev) and delivered in cooperation with Kenyatta University. The next Selection Sprint takes place from 20 July to 7 August 2026, with the main programme beginning in September 2026.